The impact would be more than 15 times larger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, which liberated energy equivalent to approximately 15 kilotons of TNT.
As a result, the asteroid has been flagged for close attention by their near-Earth monitoring system, Sentry.
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NASA said: “Sentry is a highly automated collision monitoring system that continually scans the most current asteroid catalogue for possibilities of future impact with Earth over the next 100 years.”
Other things to check out:
NASA ERROR: Space Agency forced to rename asteroid Ultima Thule after Nazi connotations | Science
Members of the Thule Society founded a political party which later evolved to become the Nazi party.
The distant object, which is found in the Kuiper Belt – the circumstellar disk of space rocks surrounding our solar system – has been renamed Arrokoth, or “sky” in the Native American Powhatan language.
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Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, said: “The name ‘Arrokoth’ reflects the inspiration of looking to the skies and wondering about the stars and worlds beyond our own.
Bad Astronomy | Hayabusa2 is leaving the asteroid Ryugu and heading back to Earth
On 13 November at 01:05 UTC, low-power thrusters on the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) spacecraft fired , accelerating the probe to a meager 9.2 centimeters per second relative to the asteroid (slower than a snowflake falls on Earth), but that was enough to give it enough velocity to escape. It started from 20 km up, and Ryugu's 900-meter size is too small to have much mass, which in turn means its gravitational attraction is whisper weak.
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The mission launched from Earth on 3 December 2014, and arrived at the diminutive asteroid on 27 June 2018. It spent the next year and a half orbiting it, imaging it, taking spectra, and performing mineralogical analysis remotely.
Asteroid warning: London Eye-sized asteroid barrelling toward Earth at 103,000 KM per hour |
For reference, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest jet ever built, could not even reach New York from London in an hour.
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One AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun (149,598,000 km), so 0.012 AU is 1,795,174 km.
Although this seems like a sizeable distance, it is close enough for NASA to describe it as “potentially hazardous”.
The space agency said: “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.
While you're here, how about this:
Japanese Space Probe Returning to Earth, With Chunks of Asteroid
Earlier this year, Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe pulled off the unprecedented feat of landing on a distant asteroid and collecting rock samples to take back as a souvenir.
Now, the probe is beginning its long trek back to Earth — a bittersweet moment for the team behind the craft.
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In September 2018, the space probe successfully landed a number of robot rovers onto the tiny asteroid Ryugu some 300 million kilometers (186 million miles) away, sending back countless fascinating pictures in the process.
See the 4 Sites Where a NASA Spacecraft May 'Tag' Asteroid Bennu Next Year (Photos) | Space
Bennu's rocky surface poses a number of unique challenges for OSIRIS-REx, which launched to the far-off asteroid in 2016 to collect a sample and return it to Earth as the first U.S. craft to do so. Touching down on the asteroid's surface to grab that sample is no easy feat. The diamond-shaped asteroid has an uneven surface covered in boulders that will make it challenging for the craft's robotic arm, named TAGSAM, to safely pick up a sample.
In addition to ensuring that the robotic arm will be able to touch down on the asteroid without sustaining any damage, the samples collected from the site should ideally also be interesting to study and also small enough for TAGSAM to actually pick up. The craft's robotic arm operates in a unique way in which, to "pick up" a sample, it emits a burst of nitrogen gas to kick up loose dust and rocks, and then the sampler head at the end of the arm collects the debris.
NASA asteroid alert: A colossal rock the size of Sears Tower is rapidly approaching Earth |
The prospect is terrifying as the astroid is potentially big enough to single-handedly wipe out an entire continent.
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The asteroid’s orbit path is similar to that of Asteroid 2062 Aten and it frequently passes close to Earth.
At the upper end of NASA’s estimate, SF6 is taller than the Canton Tower in China, and the Sears Tower in Chicago, US.
At the lower end of the estimate, the asteroid is comparable in size to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.
Asteroid Hygiea could become the tiniest dwarf planet | Fox News
As the debate rages on whether Pluto, currently a dwarf planet, should be given back its planet status, it may soon be joined by an asteroid that could wind up being the smallest dwarf planet in the solar system.
Asteroid Hygiea, the fourth largest space rock in the Asteroid Belt, was observed for the first time by astronomers in high-resolution. It's spherical in shape and may wind up taking the crown for the smallest dwarf from Ceres, also located in the Asteroid Belt.
Happening on Twitter
Congratulations to @JAXA_en for a very successful investigation and sample collection at asteroid Ryugu! @NASA wish… https://t.co/28r4IU4KJx Dr_ThomasZ (from Washington, DC) Wed Nov 13 18:00:01 +0000 2019
After months grappling with the rugged reality of asteroid Bennu's surface, the team leading NASA's first asteroid… https://t.co/HLdzQ6QEpu NASAGoddard (from Greenbelt, MD USA) Tue Nov 12 20:34:59 +0000 2019
Despite fear-mongering headlines, NASA did not announce that Earth is in danger of being hit by an asteroid around… https://t.co/GMieJu5CZJ snopes Mon Nov 11 18:03:08 +0000 2019
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